COMBATING DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IN TURKEY

Abstract

Title: Combating domestic violence in Turkey – An analysis of the discourses on domestic violence among organisations in Turkey Author: Jenny Hennecke Advisors: Merete Hellum (Göteborg University, Sweden) Tiiu Soidre (Göteborg University, Sweden) Yakın Ertürk (Middle East Technical University, Turkey) Type of work: Thesis for Sociology, 30 credit points (ECTS) Number of pages: 63 Timeframe: 2007, January – 2008, March Aim of the thesis (objectives and questions): Domestic violence is an important issue in Turkey and there are many different organisations combating domestic violence. My interest is to analyse how these organisations perceive domestic violence. This will be done by analysing the socio-cultural context and the discourses on domestic violence that are prevalent in the organisations working with this issue. My research questions are: Which discourses can be found in the definitions of domestic violence of the organisations? What are the similarities and the differences in the approaches? Which cooperation problems can occur due to the different approaches to domestic violence? Method: To start with, a literature review on the field was done. Later, interviews were conducted with the organisations of interest. Critical Discourse Analysis combined with a feministic perspective was the main tool used for the analysis. Main results: The discourses on domestic violence prevalent in the organisations working on domestic violence in Turkey were largely derived from an !international discourse" on domestic violence. This means that their discourse was in line with international standards and adapted to the Turkish context. However, the organisations were found to be rather elitist and progressive in their views and ways of working whereas the view of most of the population of Turkey, including the politicians, are rather traditional in their way of thinking and acting. The differences in approaches to domestic violence between the organisations seemed to be rather small. The only issue where a different approach could be found was that regarding the involvement of men in the organisations and in the activities of the organisations. Furthermore, there seemed to be a lack of communication and cooperation among the organisations thereby hindering their ability to network, form public opinion and collaborate on projects.